The high price of Ireland's deep recession was centre stage today after the master of the high court gave voice to a taboo subject and said banks were driving some borrowers who couldn't repay their debt to "suicide".

Edmund Honohan said some banks who were "cheerleaders of the Celtic Tiger" were "reverting to type" and pursuing people to the "bitter end" even when they had no money.

In an extraordinary intervention, he said the "new debt set" have legal rights but some are made to feel like "outlaws".

His remarks come just a fortnight after figures showed that one of the country's biggest suicide crisis centres, Pieta House, treated 1,063 last year, almost a third more than it did last year.

Joan Freeman, founder and chief executive of the centre, said the recession was creating a sense of despair in the country – with less money and few jobs having a ripple effect on people's lives.

Honohan said Ireland couldn't wait another 12 months for changes in bankruptcy law (the IMF's deadline for reform in debt legislation is March next year) and said new, simple legislation could be passed "within a month".

Edmund Honohan, central bank governor Patrick, said no one was taking the issue forward despite promises to change the draconian Irish bankruptcy laws.

This he said was because no one in the department of finance knows the law and no one in the department of justice knows economics.

He also criticised banks who thought they had the right to pursue borrowers when they themselves had invested as partners and said in these cases the bank should bear some of the cost of that risk.

"Why should there be an incentive to cause untold harm socially when there is no money at the end of the road?"

He warned that banks should not expect to have it all their own way when pursuing debtors.

"We know which banks were the cheerleaders for the (Celtic) Tiger," he said. "Yet some banks are reverting to type and come to court assuming that the banker always wins anyway. That's not how the law sees it."

He told the Irish Independent he decided to speak out as many borrowers who cannot repay their loans, such as mortgages, credit cards and personal loans, are being pursued by banks who had already written the loans off.

These aggressive actions in the repossession and bankruptcy courts were just "meaningless accountancy exercises", he said.

Honohan, who deals with a range of legal matters including applications to register and enforce judgments, said in one case a creditor who obtained a judgment mortgage for €14,000, at interest of 8% per year over the debt relating to the hire of an industrial machine, was seeking an order aimed at procuring the sale of the family home.

He was criticised by the bank officials union who said his link between debt and suicide was inflammatory and emotive.

But Honohan said he had met several widows of people who had been driven to suicide because of the distress of debt.

He told RTE radio it was important to speak out and he thought some people who were feeling suicidal yesterday might be feeling better today because they were not alone.